More of wot I have read...

I have read a couple more of the Diskworld series of books that I am so fond of. These are written much as the all of the others and there are many ‘in jokes’ for the faithful, without distracting from the stand-alone nature of the books. More of the same and just as good as all of them…

Going Postal – by Terry Pratchett

‘Moist von Lipwig is a con artist… …and a fraud and a man faced with a life choice: be hanged, or put Ankh-Morpork’s ailing postal service back on its feet.

It’s a tough decision.

But he’s got to see that the mail gets through, come rain, hail, sleet, dogs, the Post Office Worker’s Friendly and Benevolent Society, the evil chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, and a midnight killer.

Getting a date with Adora Bell Dearheart would be nice, too.’


THUD! – by Terry Pratchett

‘It's a game of Trolls and Dwarfs where the player must take both sides to win...
It's the noise a troll club makes when crushing in a dwarf skull, or when a dwarfish axe cleaves a trollish cranium...
It's the unsettling sound of history about to repeat itself ... THUD!’

***

I have been reading many books on history for background research into the Fencible soldiers of New Zealand. All very interesting stuff, but a bit dry at times. Sue got me the next book out from library on a whim, and I found it very entertaining both from a story point of view and from its construction. Very well worth seeking out…

The London Pigeon Wars – by Patrick Neate

‘Gunnersbury claims that the hostilities were commenced at the battle of Trafalgar. But the verity is that Trafalgar was just a skirmish, a starling-tempered flare-up of pointed beaks and posturing. Really, for everybirdy, the war began with its utterance, and that was later, after the murder of Brixton 23 above the Acre Lane Sainsbury’s.

The London pigeons are at war. They’re not sure what they’re fighting about. It could be politics or personality or territory or religion or maybe the ‘unilluminable nik’ called Murray?

Down on the ground, a gang of twentysomethings are facing up to the disappointments of adulthood: while their peers seem ‘so good at London’. These guys… umm… aren’t. The hatmaker can barely sell a hatpin, the IT whiz-kid’s gone bust, and the TV micro-celeb’s continually being stopped in the streets – mistaken for someone else. But then Murray comes into their midst. And he’s different…’

***

I have read this biography for more research and was taken with the sad, desperate story of this little known New Zealand heroine.

Jean Batten the Garbo of the skies – by Ian Mackersey

‘Jean Batten was on of the great aviation megastars of the 1930s. Her spectacular flights ranked with those of Britain’s Amy Johnson and America’s Amelia Earhart. Yet, despite her brilliance as a pilot, she remained the least well known of them all. For the dentist’s daughter from New Zealand built an impregnable wall around her private life – which was dominated, though few ever knew it, by the formidable influence of her mother.

Drawing on secret memoirs found after Jean Batten’s death and on hundreds of interviews with people who knew her, this biography of Jean’s sad and elusive life explodes the enduring myths of happiness and perfection that she created for herself. It also finally solves the mystery of her bizarre and lonely end. The real Jean Batten emerges as a fascinating woman, who combined bravery and ruthlessness with the stunning and seductive beauty she used so effectively to fulfil her great ambitions.’